IDEAS.

Hi friends! For those of you just checking out this area of our website "refresh", we plan to share lots of FREE ideas here on HOME, DECOR, INTERIORS, and other LOVELY LIFE THINGS. We will also include some helpful, FREE DOWNLOADS, so check back often!

AND even better, PLEASE SIGN UP BELOW if you'd love for us to occasionally share design + organization tips, as well as new items from our shop to help you alongin this effort in creating a lovely home, as well as meaningful celebrations for you, your friends + your family.

⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀+ Use what you have to group things that you ACTUALLY LIKE looking at:

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀+ Decide if something needs to be seen or not when organizing and sorting:

-- one of my favorite, inexpensive go to’s for sorting containers when you need to SEE what’s inside all the time are the clear plastic shoe containers with lids from those big box stores. Yep, not just for shoes. In our house they store folded scarves, belts, kids legos and blocks, and a wide variety of other things. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀

-- Think donation centers, churches, shelters, local schools (supplies, books, etc.), your friends down the street that have kids. Even entertain a garage sale, or set out a FREE box at the end of your driveway.

-- Also, most donation places can recycle old clothing they can’t sell or give away instead of sending it to the landfill.

-- The Council for Textile Recycling online can help you find places in your area that will help you with this effort. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Get started and tell us how they work for you! See you Friday for a recap and a few final tips of inspiration for the week! Yippee!! 💌

WEEK 2 already friends! Wow! We did great work last week on our home categories. We assessed where we are at and got a gauge for where we need to go.

I challenged you LAST WEEK to look at a single *home category* and then take a deep dive into that category throughout your home. See previous posts for more info!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀✅We talked through avoiding the trap of having *duplicates*, making sure we are not spending time and money on organizing things we no longer need, and we wrapped up with being realistic about the time have to devote to things.

+ My NEW #CHALLENGE for you this week is going to start with you thinking about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. I want you to think about your *home category* in more depth and think about all the items in that category and “where they live” day to day.

For example, if I’m going through the home category of *CLOTHING* and I am looking at coats/rain jackets/umbrellas and I always take them on and off in the entryway near the coat closet, yet I am storing them in the bedroom closet, we need to revamp this. That’s a bunch of extra steps to find and get to that one thing you use occasionally.⠀⠀

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀+ Here is the mantra I want you to adopt friends:

“Things need to live where they are used the most”.

WORDS TO LIVE BY!

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀+ Apply this idea to whatever your #homecategory is. If you’re focusing on *FOOD* for example, are your recipe books in 3 places in your house? Are they close to your kitchen when you need to use them? Do you want to keep all them or can you share with a friend, donate or sell them? It is a simple idea that can make a HUGE DIFFERENCE when you put it completely.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀✂️️+ On Wednesday we’ll discuss sorting and organizing with things you already have, as well as thoughtful ways to #donate, #recycle and gift away the things in your home you no longer need! Share your feedback with us! We want to hear from you! Successes, tricks, failures, jokes...yes please! 💌

AND you’ve figured out what category you want to focus on in your home that you want to *simplify*. See previous post. Maybe it’s your kitchen, maybe it’s your kid’s toys, maybe it’s your personal care items. Either way, you’re taking a great step forward just stopping to look at one specific group of “things” that make up your current home.

*Practical Tips* to simplify your chosen home > category <

+Don’t fall into the trap of “duplicates”. Do you have two spatulas that do the same things and you always use your favorite? Keep the one you always use, donate the other. Do you have 12 cups for your kids? I’d argue you can pair down to 1 to 2 per child. Do you have a huge stack of books and you only re-read and look through 3 of them? Donate or gift the rest.

+ What areas of your home category are always feeling the most challenged by? What are you always trying to “organize”? Can you pair down for your sanity? For example, do you have a make up bag or drawer that is exploding? How many of these things do you actually use? Can you give some of those lip colors away to a friend? Pair down to only what you need and use + then we’ll look at how to organize it.

+Spend what time you have on these task. Do you have 5 or 10 minutes? Look through one drawer related to your category. Do you have 20-30 minutes? Look at some shelves. Are you a magical unicorn and have an entire afternoon to devote to your home category? *Jealous* Go through items in each room related to your category. Stay focus ONLY on your home category, try your best to put blinders on to everything else. Yep, it can be hard!

+ Once you are ready to part with something, keep a large box or tote bag handy to move those items into. Take them out to the garage, a closet, or set it up on the washer for all we care. Just get them removed from your everyday space so you can move forward! *Phew!*

Ok friends, let’s get to work! Share your successes and challenges and jokes below with us! We are her to help each other to bring order to our chaos! Next up, we'll recap our first week and we'll leave you with some thoughtful inspiration!

Instagram Challenge: Week 1

Hello everyone! Week one! We’re talking all things on editing our homes, simplifying, and entertaining the idea of practical minimalism for the next few weeks if you want to join in with us. Let’s get right to it!

Where to start. Feeling overwhelmed.

Are you there? High five. We are with you. Even I feel like this periodically and I have a pretty solid grasp on how all of this works. The reason why is because life continues to change and evolve, along with ourselves and our families, so we are trying to keep up.

Sometimes our systems need complete overhauls, and sometimes they just need tweaks. Please don’t be frightened by any of that. It is manageable, I promise.

So the *challenge today* is to think of life into *simplifying categories*. For example, here’s what is currently working for me: home goods, food, clothing, personal care, fun. Home goods meaning how we make the house function - from cleaning to functional decor. Our Food category is basically all things kitchen, preparation, utensils, storage, etc. Fun is all the extras that bring us joy, kids toys, books, magazines, to collections. Decide what categories work for you. You might need more or less. You are welcome to use our list that is working well for our family.

Now I’m going to encourage you to select *only one* of these categories and take a deep look and dive into it.

Jot down or think about in general what all falls into this category for you in your home. Get a good grasp on all the things in your category and then come back to us on Wednesday for some practical tips on how to start simplifying what you have, wherever you are at with it. Yep, there’s no judgement here.

*Also* feel free to post your categories below to share with others and help eachother weed through the mayhem! There are no wrong or right categories! You’ve got this!

Hi friends! Some of you have known me for decades, others, we’re meeting today. Heyyyy / holla!! Before we dive into our few weeks of “how to edit our homes, simplifying + entertaining the idea of practical minimalism”...

I wanted to quickly share with you my background and why I have a little bit of *hopefully* helpful wisdom + ideas to share with you.

I’m a mom of a toddler, wife, and we’re soon to be a family of 4 in the fall. I’ve owned my own business, #fuzzyhipposhop since 2011 and it has evolved from many different mediums and scales, and is now focused on ideas, gifts and paper goods for celebrations and home. While building my business, I’ve had a career in architecture for well over a decade, made a shift to interior design, and am one exam away from having my professional Interior Design License. My architecture / interior design background started in residential design and then moved into education architecture and interiors (think any kind of learning space you can imagine). Yes. All these things were and are awesome.

What all of these experiences have offered me is a pretty keen look into how we live in our own homes, because there is infinite overlap in my opinion.

Our homes need to grow and evolve with us, and we do need to give care and attention to them like we would a plant, however there are ways to make that more enjoyable and easier.

Trust me. The advice I want to share is hopefully going to help you make quick, practice changes in your home life that can evolve with you and your families.

How the next few weeks will work:

+ Mondays | I’ll post a "big idea" theme to focus on, along with practical tips for making it happen.

+ Wednesday we’ll get another round of ideas and tips to make the week’s theme a reality. On

+ Friday’s, we’ll do a quick recap and let you with a refreshing inspirational quote to get your ready for the weekend/the next week.

We start tomorrow! I’m super excited and hope you are too. Please continue to share these posts with anyone you think would benefit from a simplified life!

Hello, friends!

I have no interest in becoming a photographer or a flat lay professional, but I am however FASCINATED by flat lays, and how all of your bits and treasures somehow become magical when they are grouped together. I hope to improve my techniques as I go. Will they be perfect? Heck no.

This year, I am going to focus on COLOR and how it relates to the season of life I am in during that time. The COLOR will therefore create the theme for each photo and help me to gather up said treasures around my home that further illustrate the COLOR I am vibing at that time.

So to start off, I picked RED. Why RED you ask?

Well....it is the season of LOVE after all and I am feeling particularly grateful for all of the love I have in my life. The end of 2016 wasn't particularly kind to me, so the mere change of calendar to 2017 ignited a renewed and refreshed sense of joy and thankfulness in me, and, well, LOVE.

Rough times magnify the good in your life, the people (and fuzzy babies -- AKA my dog, chai) that make your heart feel warm no matter what.

There are also little things around my home that remind me of fun times, little outings, silly jokes (and sometimes some bad ones...), and of course RED lipstick. You have to have that around. Do us women really even understand the power of RED lipstick? I don't think we do. It is PROFOUND. I was afraid of it for many, many years, but came to embrace it in my 30s. It instantly makes me feel put together for no reason at all, which is SUPER important when you are caring for a toddler all day and running your own business (more on that in a later post...so much more to share on that front!).

Having little tricks up your sleeve like that help you to project the best version of yourself --- that, my friend, is a big deal. So in conclusion ---- RED lipstick.

My heart necklace in the photo is the piece I tell my daughter when I am wearing it that it makes me think of her because "she is my heart".

I think she might be the key reason why my heart functions on a day to day basis.

And that Betty Crocker picture cook book.... a great example of a time when I DID JUDGE A BOOK BY IT'S COVER because the cover is the best part. The inside is OK, but I am OK with that as well.

The hippo with the party hat is from my daughter's 1st birthday, and I couldn't bare the thought of taking the little hat off that my husband and I sat at the kitchen table making and giggling over for a few nights before her big day. By the way, there were several other animals with party hats on...yes it was completely magical.

AND if she lets me redo that party theme again I'll do cartwheels through the house and throw confetti out of my pocket!

The red vintage scissors were my grandmothers. I think of her always, and especially when I use these. I love them.

The incredible extension chord was an amazing, and spot on gift from my husband many years ago that he purchased from BEST MADE CO. I know right? I didn't realize extension chords could evoke emotion and be that beautiful. I am still coming to terms with it.

The XOXO greeting card of ours fits in perfectly because it says "All year long Valentine, not yet today" --- and of course I designed this one with my husband in mind. I love extra special days to show the people we love that they are extra special and extraordinary to us, BUT I think you have to let them know this all year long. So it is a SORT OF Valentine card. Hey, you might like it! And if not, we have lots of other humorous to mushy and serious styles in our LOVE shop section to check out. I'm confident you'll find something fun to help you spread the love around.

Lots of LOVE + RED to you... and now to go brainstorm my next flat lay theme...and to pick up all the toddler blocks.